


The Brown Land, I Figure

by Jenwryn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, Australia, HP: EWE, Multi, Post - Deathly Hallows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-27
Updated: 2011-07-27
Packaged: 2017-10-21 19:46:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/229055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/pseuds/Jenwryn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This country is cruel to an English girl, but at least it never lies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Brown Land, I Figure

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** Wantonly threw away my urge to try and translate Aussie-isms. ;)
> 
>  **A/N:** AU post-DH, EWE, Australia is always like another character when I write about her, and I have no idea where the urge to write this came from (actually, I have a bit of an idea: I know that you can blame work, because I was trolling Trove and stumbled across Dicken's _Our Mutual Friend_ , which made me want to write something about a 'mutual friend'. AS YOU DO.) The title comes from 'Aquifer', a short story by Tim Winton, which is the same story that Hermione is thinking about in this fic.

The air is hot, pushing in from the west and dusting everything desert-pink. Hermione had read a short story once, tucked away in the dull pages of a laundromat mag, about _flying dirt of the deserts, pink and corporeal_ and the juice of things beneath the surface. The words rise in her, whenever she sees it; pink, brown, pink, across the scuffed leather of her sandals. She thinks of rain, and of whether she's put enough ice in the Esky to keep the groceries cool, and of clouds, and of overdues. Not so much of the latter, as of the formers; that librarians are obsessed with you having left your book on the breakfast counter three weeks in a row is frankly a myth. An absurd one. Like suggesting that it could ever snow here. Like suggesting that she had ever been a revolutionary: heroine of a world. Or, at least, of part of it.

That, of course, isn't a myth at all, really. It is fact, but it feels vague to her, far less real that the real of the sun wanking off on the brim of her hat, making the ute burn against her bum as she leans against the side of the vehicle, and waits. Waits, for a plane, a non-mythological plane, to circle the dusty airfield, then land. Waits, for him. Waits, for something she doesn't spend much energy trying to name any more.

She rests between them, hovering, breathing, like the pink dust at her feet. Her husband, and their lover. It's far less nebulous than the war, than the battle, than the lost lives that keep her awake at night and send her out into kitchen to scrub or clean because it's too hot to try and fall back asleep and, anyway, if she zones out for long enough then the dish water will turn cool. If the baby is up, she'll sit with him on the verandah, showing him stars she's had to learn the names of, telling him about his mother, and singing him songs that her own mother had sung to her, a lifetime ago. Sometimes, she'll mark the work of her husband's students, until the heat finally, finally, puts her to rest.

This country is cruel to an English girl, but at least it never lies.

The plane comes, buzz and hum, and annoys the kestrels surfing the heat.

She can see him, as he comes down the temporary stairs. He's pale, he's going to burn, out here, but his hair is pulled back and the light catches on his face. He's already sweaty by the time he reaches her, but she feels as though she's been sweaty for the last two years so what does it matter. She puts her hands on his arms, below his elbows, and leans up to kiss him.

He tastes of jet lag, and cheap airline whiskey. Smells of magics that she doesn't see here very often – the kinds of magic that let her and her husband stay, because they can teach what has almost been lost, this side of the globe: the Muggles in power have done a fair job of keeping it out, and of squashing the old magics that had been here before them. It's why he hasn't arrived by other means. Out further, though, out where the pink dust is born, they'll toast his name, and they'll take him, even as her lover, even as her husband's lover: they might be disadvantaged, but they're trying, and they're loyal, and they need.

She talks, as she puts his bags in the back, and guns the ute to life. The drive is dirt and potholes – a long, black stretch of unforgiving highway – then dirt and corrugations; bulldust sucks at the tyres with silken lips. She talks, but she doesn't really say anything, just focuses on the road and the feel of him beside her. He listens to her as he always has, she can see; the way he relaxes at the sound of her voice. She can barely remember that it wasn't always that way. That was before. Before doesn't matter.

He puts his hand on her leg, as she drives. Moves his thumb to the stroke of her voice. On a stretch of good road, he brushes a kiss to her neck.

Midday sun squints across the window.

The house is small, settled between two swells of dirt that only a local could call hills. Tin roof glinting, bush tomatoes softening the spinifex circles. Shed out the back, tougher than most, walls bent and bruised; bars atits windows, in stark contrast to the house, which barely has a lock on the front door. He doesn't comment, though she's sure that he sees – he knows. He was the first to know. He usually is.

Not in some things, though. In some things, like _them_ , she's the first to savour it.

Her husband waits for them at the doorway, the gentle press of the flyscreen at his back. The scar across his face is paler, more silver, upon the tan of him. He grins, slow and broad, as she brings the ute to a stop and lets the turbo tick with heat and completion. He grins, as he pushes from the door and comes to the edge of the verandah; he grins, and it makes her heart shiver every time. To be so reassured, that this was the right choice. To be so reminded, that he is happy.

 _Lupin_ , says Severus, as he walks from the ute, to the shade of roof; as he puts his bags in the dust and crooks an eyebrow.

 _Severus_ , says Remus, and answers the eyebrow with hands and lips.

In the house, Teddy grumbles at the kitchen table, flies buzz against the windows, and Hermione lets her husband pour the tea; lets her lover add a concoction of his own, bright and heady. The sun slants across all four of them, hot and stark and purifying.

The land is honest, and it swallows them whole.


End file.
